Van Hien La
Tae-Hwan Kim
Alejandro Calderon-Urrea
Tibor Janda4- 1Center of Crop Research for Adaptation to Climate Change, Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry, Quyet Thang, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam
- 2Department of Animal Science, Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, College of Agriculture & Life Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea
- 3Department of Biology, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA, United States
- 4Department of Plant Physiology and Metabolomics, Agricultural Institute, Center for Agriculture Research, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), Martonvásár, Hungary
Editorial on the Research Topic
Plant signaling in response to environmental stresses
In nature, plants constantly interact with both abiotic and biotic environments. Recent studies have often converged on plant-stress interactions by modulating and eliciting precise signals. Advances in molecular techniques and mining of big datasets have increased our understanding of these processes, revealed new levels of complexity, and opened new research directions. This Research Topic aims to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of how plants use physiological, biochemical, and molecular genetic mechanisms to adapt to adverse environments. The contributions included in this Research Topic provide new insights into the responses and adaptations of various crops to abiotic stresses.
In a study of this Research Topic, Jin et al. indicated that fluctuating desert environments induce temporal variation in the photosystem II (PSII)-energy partitioning response. The authors revealed that different responses to PSII-energy allocation were influenced by photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), air temperature (Ta), and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) at a diurnal scale. In contrast, PSII-energy partitioning on a seasonal scale displayed greater variability among the different environmental variables, such as photochemical efficiency (ΦPSII) and non-regulatory thermal dissipation (ΦNPQ, ΦNO), being more predisposed to changes in Ta, and ΦNPQ to changes in VPD, acclimatize to excessive PAR, dry-air conditions, and prolonged drought. Photosynthesis in plants is particularly susceptible to environmental fluctuations. Similarly, plant photosynthetic activity and growth are related to light intensity. Low light intensity caused by shading significantly reduces plant growth and biomass, probably because of the reduced photosynthetic rate (Wang et al., 2012). Interestingly, Zhang et al. addressed clonal integration (Glechoma longituba), and high-nutrient supplements not only significantly increased the growth of apical portions, but also enhanced plant growth and biomass under shaded light conditions. Collectively, these studies revealed that the pictures emerged from environmentally induced variations in photosynthetic processes as a function of plant adaptation.
Plants perceive stress signals through internal receptors, such as G-protein, kinase, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and calcium, which trigger molecular cascades to transmit signals (Devireddy et al., 2021). Among these, calcium-permeable channels in the plasma membrane play a vital role in plant response to environmental stress. Silamparasan et al. addressed the significance of calcium-dependent protein kinase (CDPKs)-mediated phosphorylation of serine (Ser)-856 of glutamate receptor-like (GLR)3.6 protein, which plays an essential role in salt and abscisic acid (ABA) response in Arabidopsis by modulating Ca2+ signaling. Additionally, Ca2+-mediated CDPK16 phosphorylates GLR3.6, which regulates root growth under normal and salt-stress conditions. On the other hand, in guard cells, H2O2 triggers an influx of cytosolic calcium (Ca2+) to regulate ABA-induced stomatal closure in Arabidopsis plants (Pei et al., 2000). Evidence has demonstrated that H2O2-induced Ca2+ ion flux is involved in H2O2 perception and signaling pathways (Demidchik and Shabala, 2018). Additionally, Available at: Wu et al. (2020) identified hydrogen peroxide-induced Ca2+ increase 1 (HPCA1) as a leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase induced by H2O2. HPCA1 mediates H2O2-induced activation of Ca2+ channel signals in guard cells and is required for stomatal closure. Therefore, HPCA1 is involved in the perception of extracellular H2O2 in response to various external stressors and internal cues in plants.
Recently, abscisic acid application has been shown to partially improve water use efficiency (WEU). Roeder et al. found that ABA-related cyano cyclopropyl compounds (CCPs) play a pivotal role in minimizing leaf transpiration. Several CCPs activate ABA signaling, such as CCP1, CCP2, and CCP5, which are an order of magnitude more efficient than ABA in minimizing transpiration in Arabidopsis plants. Among these, CCP2 mediated an increase in water use efficiency superior to ABA, without trade-offs in biomass accumulation in a progressive drought experiment. Thus, ABA and other chemically stable ABA agonists have the potential to improve crop water productivity. Furthermore, ABA is known to be a phytohormone responsible for stomatal closure, and ABA receptors including the REGULATORY COMPONENT OF ABA RECEPTOR (RCAR) and PYRABACTIN RESISTANCE 1-LIKE (PYL) (PYR/PYL/RCAR) play a central role in executing ABA’s role in water relations (Cutler et al., 2010; Vaidya et al., 2019). Among these ABA receptors, RCAR and PYL are the most targeted for ABA sensitivity and water productivity. Overexpression of ABA receptors RCAR6/PYL12 increased water use efficiency (WUE) by up to 40% in Arabidopsis (Yang et al., 2016). In addition, overexpression of TaPYL1/2/4/6 in wheat increases ABA sensitivity and significantly lowers a plant’s lifetime water consumption (Mega et al., 2019). Physiological analyses of TaPYL4 overexpressing plants showed that the water-saving trait is a consequence of reduced transpiration during water deficits (Mega et al., 2019).
Furthermore, one contribution pertains to transcriptome analysis aimed at gaining insight into the molecular response of soybean drought response to drought mepiquat chloride pretreatment. Wang et al. identified DEGs in drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive soybean genotypes and identified candidate genes such as LOC100816177, SOMT-2, LOC100784120, LOC100797504, LOC100794610, and LOC100819853, which are crucial for the drought resistance of soybeans. Taken together, this study indicated that 2-oxocarboxylic acid metabolism and isoflavone biosynthetic pathways are the core pathways by which mepiquat chloride regulates soybean drought response.
In summary, the five articles published on the Research Topic provide illustrative examples of the research area of plant signaling responses to environmental stress by highlighting the complexity of the connections between physiological, key signaling, and metabolic pathways in plants. Thus, we hope that these compiled articles provide new insights into this topic and expand the scope of future research.
Author contributions
VHL: Writing – orginal draft & editing. T-HK: Writing – review & editing. AC-U: Writing – review & editing. TJ: Writing – review & editing.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
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Demidchik, V., Shabala, S. (2018). Mechanisms of cytosolic calcium elevation in plants: the role of ion channels, calcium extrusion systems and NADPH oxidase-mediated ‘ROS-Ca2+ Hub’. Funct. Plant Biol. 45, 9–27. doi: 10.1071/FP16420
Devireddy, A. R., Zandalinas, S. I., Fichman, Y., Mittler, R. (2021). Integration of reactive oxygen species and hormone signaling during abiotic stress. Plant J. 105 (2), 459–476. doi: 10.1111/tpj.15010
Mega, R., Abe , F., Kim , J. S., Tsuboi, Y., Tanaka, K., Kobayashi, T., et al. (2019). Tuning water-use efficiency and drought tolerance in wheat using abscisic acid receptors. Nat. Plants 5, 153–159. doi: 10.1038/s41477-019-0361-8
Pei, X. M., Murata, Y., Benning, B., Thomine, S., Klüsener, B., Allen, G. J., et al. (2000). Calcium channels activated by hydrogen peroxide mediate abscisic acid signalling in guard cells. Nature 406 (6797), 731–734. doi: 10.1038/35021067
Vaidya, A. S., Helander, J. D. M., Peterson, F. C., Elzinga, D., Dejonghe, W., Kaundal, A., et al. (2019). Dynamic control of plant water use using designed ABA receptor agonists. Science 366, 1–8. doi: 10.1126/science.aaw8848
Wang, P., Lei, J. P., Li, M. H., Yu, F. H. (2012). Spatial heterogeneity in light supply affects intraspecific competition of a stoloniferous clonal plant. PloS One 7, e39105. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0039105
Wu, F., Chi, Y., Jiang, C., Xu, Y., Xie, L., Huang, F., et al. (2020). Hydrogen peroxide sensor HPCA1 is an LRR receptor kinase in Arabidopsis. Nature 578, 577–581. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2032-3
Keywords: abiotic stress, environment stress, hormone signaling, ROS signaling, phenotypic plasticity
Citation: La VH, Kim T-H, Calderon-Urrea A and Janda T (2023) Editorial: Plant signaling in response to environmental stresses. Front. Plant Sci. 14:1282465. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1282465
Received: 24 August 2023; Accepted: 08 September 2023;
Published: 21 September 2023.
Edited and Reviewed by:
Eric Ruelland, Génie Enzymatique et Cellulaire/Reconnaissance Moléculaire et Catalyse UMR7025, FranceCopyright © 2023 La, Kim, Calderon-Urrea and Janda. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Van Hien La, hiencnsh87@gmail.com